Short Story: "Strax"

[Alicorn]

That would probably explain it. Is "social justice horror" a genre...?

[jalapeno_dude]

Maybe it's an Umbridge-Voldemort thing? Relatively few of your readers have direct experience with torture, murder, or mind-control, I'd imagine, but rather tautologically one hundred percent of your readers on this forum use the Internet.

Edit: Umbridge-Voldemort in the sense of "people hate and fear Voldemort less viscerally because far fewer of them have personally encountered someone like him, whereas lots and lots of people have personally encountered someone like Umbridge"

(Warning: quibbling over semantics and definitions incoming.)

Maybe that's part of it, but that's not the primary reason for me. I didn't find the story distressing per se, like Lambda did, but I took exception to you describing it as 'innocuous.' Why? I think of 'innocuous' in the sense of definition 2 here: "not likely to irritate or offend; inoffensive." Elcenia depicts adorable children in agonizing pain, but I'd describe that as 'distressing' or 'disturbing' or 'traumatic', not 'irritating' or 'offensive'. On the other hand, the fact that you label the TAPAICAL stuff with 'don't bite me' suggests to me that you do expect people to find it 'irritating' or 'offensive,' hence not innocuous (nocuous? This is a word, apparently...).

[Bluelantern]

huh... I think another important element:

It is... straightforward (if difficult) to defeat Voldemort, the problems with the stories like Strax and Earthfic aren't so easy to solve, it isn't something that you can swing a sword at until it goes away

[Kappa]

"nocuous" may be my new favourite word.

[Bluelantern]

"nocuous" may be my new favourite word.

use it in a screenname.

[PlainDealingVillain]

It feels familiar and very reminiscent of things that actually happen and are somewhat distressing at the time. So there's less emotional distance. That's probably why? (It's a good thing, I think.)

Also, suggest moving this to not-Announcements.

[Bluelantern]

I didnt even notice this was in announcements.

Alicorn could move only part of this thread.

[Lambda]

this also feels relevant I think

[cbhacking]

At risk of somewhat derailing the conversation, I wish I could get a certain ex of mine to read those blog posts... Ouch. I learned a ton from her, and some of the things she objected to were real problems even if her proposed solutions either made no sense or were themselves problematic, but she also could occasionally channel TAPAICAL awfully well, and I was very poorly equipped to handle her responses to some of the questions I asked. If I hadn't had several long... conversations... with her, I'd have had a hard time believing people would actually say those kinds of things.

Strax was great, though. Made me sad, in a way, of course - it brings to mind things that are sad, that are problems, that need to be addressed, and some of the problems with addressing them - but it was fantastically written and ended on an upbeat note. Possibly interesting note: I wasn't sure for a good while what the gender of the narrator was. I don't know if that was intentional; it seemed to me like you could have been aiming for "members of one discriminated-against minority find themselves surrounded by a completely different one, wherein they are perceived as typical and privileged" or for "they really have never faced serious discrimination for being different before". Just an observation that put an interesting possible view on the first part of the story.

[PlainDealingVillain]

Second cbhacking. I haven't dated TAPAICAL, but I'm pretty sure I could personally document that it's not a strawman from the number of similar people I've interacted with regularly in meatspace. (The joys of a hyperliberal liberal arts college...)

I also noticed only when the description of the daughter for searchers that the daughter and presumably parents were black.